Inside the culture in hospitals – Adam Kay

Adam Kay is author of the best-selling book that shines a light on the stress and demands of working in the NHS. His remarkable (and hilarious) memoir, This is Going to Hurt : Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor has sold over a million copies. It’s also won the readers’ choice book of the year this year. So there’s a chance you’ve read it and if so you will love the discussion with Adam Kay because he takes us into the working environment in hospitals. If you’ve not read it I could not recommend this beautiful, funny, principled book more.

Adam explains in the book that the title Junior Doctor is a touch misleading – everyone who isn’t a consultant is titled a junior doctor. He is successful comedy writer who wrote the book 7 years after leaving the health service after a terrible terrible day at work. He wrote it because he found underpaid overworked health workers being politicised by the vampires who run government. Specifically the multi-millionaire former health secretary who claimed that in some way that doctors were greedy. The book is the funniest thing you’ll read this year and we covered that but we also talked through the working culture in hospitals.

US listeners will know that the issue of single payer health care is a hot topic in the US – in the UK we have the NHS and it’s worth saying as Adam says it is a source of national pride. We just need to fund it properly.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. I joined Adam for a chat at restaurant in West London.

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